User:Jay D. Easy/sandbox/Sidney O. Budington

Sidney Ozias Budington (September 16, 1823 – June 13, 1888) was an American whaler and navigator known for his role as assistent-navigator of the USS Polaris (1871) on the controversial Polaris expedition of 1871–1873. The expedition was commanded by Charles Francis Hall, an eccentric and experienced Arctic explorer who was equally inexperienced as a commander.

After Hall's demise early on during the expedition—likely from being poisoned by the head of the scientific corps, Emil Bessels—Tyson and a significant portion of others found themselves seperated from the USS Polaris (1871) and left stranded on an ice floe after the ship broke free of the ice. The group drifted over 1800 mi on the ice floe for the next six months, before being rescued off the coast of Newfoundland by the whaler USS Tigress (1871), on April 30, 1873.

Early life
Sidney Ozias Budington was born in 1823, into a prominent whaling family in Groton, Connecticut. His parents' names were Alonzo and Hannah. Budington went to sea for the first time when he was 13 years old. At the age of 16, he sailed on his first whaling ship, which took him to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

In 1850, he married his long-term girl friend, a school teacher named Sarah Knowles, with whom he would have three daughters. The same year, he sailed to the Davis Strait for the first time. He would make 12 more Arctic voyages in the next 23 years.

Whaling career
In 1851, Budington sailed on the McLellan and became part of the first Qallunaat crew to overwinter in Cumberland Sound. This trip was so successful that he overwintered in Cumberland Sound again on his next voyage. He obtained 24 whales and 1,000 sealskins and made an excellent profit. His next trip was a disaster. He went to Frobisher Bay, caught no whales and lost 13 men to scurvy – a lack of vitamin C.

The Inuk recorded as King-wat-che-ung—or Bob—saved Budington's life. Presumably, he fed Budington country food, which contains the vitamin C lacking from preserved meat on board whaling ships. Budington declared in 1860 that, if scurvy ever plagued his crew again, he would immediately put away all the ship's meat and feed his men country food. Like other whaling captains, Budington relied on Inuit hunters to supply his men with fresh meat.

Polaris expedition
In 1871, the American explorer Charles Francis Hall hired Budington to captain his expedition to the North Pole. Budington seems to have drawn a sharp distinction between blubber hunters, as he referred to whalers like himself, and explorers like Hall. According to Captain George Emory Tyson, who was also on board, Budington secretly dreamed of scuttling the expedition ship near an Inuit settlement, living out the winter there and then getting free passage home to the United States via Denmark. A paid vacation appealed to him; a risky attempt to reach the North Pole did not.

If this had indeed been Budington's plan, he never admitted to it. He did, however, clash publicly with Hall from the beginning of the voyage. When Hall died in November 1871, many wondered if Budington could have murdered him. Subsequent investigations have concluded that Hall was administered large doses of arsenic in the final weeks of his life, but it seems unlikely that Budington had enough access to Hall to commit the crime.

The expedition continued although Budington never made a serious attempt to reach the North Pole. On the way home, he ordered his crew to abandon the ship after it hit an iceberg. The ship was pulled away in a storm, and 19 expedition members were left stranded on the pack ice, where they lived for six months until they were rescued. Budington and the rest of the crew managed to get their leaking ship to Foulke Bay in northern Greenland, where they spent the winter. When the ice broke up, they gave the ruined ship to local Inuit and headed south in small boats until a whaling ship picked them up.

Budington was officially cleared of all major charges in the official U.S. inquiry into the expedition although he was forced to admit to drunken binges and insubordination to Hall. His reputation did not fully recover.

Death
Over time, Budington became close to many Inuit around Cumberland Sound. Budington never went to sea again. He died in 1888. At least seven Inuit visited the United States on his whaling ships, but four of them died of illnesses either on board ship or in the new country. Several Inuit are buried or have memorials near Budington's own grave in Starr Cemetery in Groton, Connecticut.